Film Style Research Articles

Real-time non-photorealistic animation for immersive storytelling in “Age of Sail”

Immersive media such as virtual and augmented reality pose some interesting new challenges for non-photorealistic animation: we must not only balance the screen-space rules of a 2D visual style against 3D motion coherence, but also account for stereo spatialization and interactive camera movement, at a rate of 90 frames per second. We introduce two new real-time rendering techniques: MetaTexture, an example-based texturing method that adheres to the movement of 3D geometry while preserving the texture’s screen-space characteristics, and Edge Breakup, a method for roughening edges by warping with structured noise. We also describe a custom rendering pipeline featuring art-directable coloring, shadow filtering, and texture indication, and our approach to animating and rendering a painterly ocean in real time. We show how we have used these techniques to achieve the “moving illustration” style of the real-time immersive short film “Age of Sail”.

The style of Ingmar Bergman’s films

ABSTRACT This analysis of the style of Ingmar Bergman’s films uses methods of treating film style that were first proposed and put into practice over 40 years ago by the author. Since then they have been applied to a very large number and range of films, and the results of these investigations published in books and in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. The basic technique of analysis used is drawing on the terms and categories used by film-makers in creating the films. It also gives weight to the film-maker’s ideas about what they are doing and why. The local and international context of the work of the film-maker also contributes to the analysis. After a brief summary of Ingmar Bergman’s film-making career and his films, his individual films are analysed in terms of the characteristics of the shots in them, such as length, closeness of camera, camera movement, POV, and so on. A simple statistical consideration of all these quantities enables a new separation of Bergman’s career into three phases from this perspective, with the film Persona being one of the turning points. Using a new technique of digital frame analysis, other points emerge regarding the development of his handling of actor movement and camera movement in his staging of love scenes, which gives rise to what could be called the Bergman signature shot. Another discovery is that Bergman’s two best known films, Det sjunde inseglet and Smultronstället are stylistically anomalous in his work.

Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (2nd edition)

Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (2nd edition)

The witch, the killer, and the duckling. The emotionalized reflexivity of the Italian giallo

ABSTRACT In the sixties and seventies, a wide move towards personal participation and bodily involvement involved media discourse and public opinion in a shift towards experimental languages. Several filmmakers in Europe and in the USA began exploring the limits of classical film style, developing what David Bordwell labeled as intensified continuity. In this respect, a highly significant chapter is the so-called Italian giallo, or rather the whole system of cycles (also called filoni, strands) of the crime and police procedural genre that characterized Italian cinema in those years. The Italian crime cinema has left an important legacy, creating true cult phenomena, and we must assume that its importance is to be found also in its formal traits: in its ability to experiment with the forms and expressions of the new sensibility. The exemplary case study of my paper will be the cult title Don’t Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci, 1972), as a typical by-product of the late sixties and seventies’ anxiety to provoke and explore new languages, where many ‘fear-relevant’ conventions and genre markers were almost savagely exploited in a controversial but influential production formula and as an ‘emotionalized’ tactic of involvement.

The Insight and Limitation of “Post-Theory”: The Poetics Problem of Chinese Cinema Carried by David Bordwell

ABSTRACT David Bordwell has devoted himself to studying the poetics of cinema in terms of the mode and style of films. Bordwell's study of Chinese film poetics has also become a mirror to reflect on the effectiveness and limitation of the middle-level theory as a form of “post theory”. Accordingly, “the gweilo's middle-level (or piecemeal) theories” proved the fundamental methodology for Bordwell to carry out the analysis of the poetics of Chinese cinema. Paying close attention to the action factor of Hong Kong popular cinema and analysing “aesthetics in action”, Bordwell indicated that one had to re-understand the question of “popular cinema's recreational and artistic natures”. Bordwell analysed Hou's efforts to carry out cinematic staging in terms of “craft” and “technique”. Bordwell labelled Hou's cinematic style “lyric realism” and “mature realism”. Through middle-level (or piecemeal) theories, he was liable to indulge in minor details, especially when he attempted to deal with the questions of cinematic theories and cinematic history as a whole. Thus, we need to determine both the strong and weak aspects of his analysis of the poetics of Chinese cinema.

O clássico e o moderno

Trata-se de analisar dois ensaios produzidos pelo crítico e historiador Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes sobre os cineastas Serguei Eisenstein e Orson Welles. Publicados na segunda metade de 1950 no Suplemento Literário do jornal O Estado de S. Paulo, os ensaios analisam aspectos da linguagem, do estilo e da expressão social dos filmes de Eisenstein e Welles a partir de um recorte histórico-biogr´áfico delineado a partir dos estudos históricos desenvolvidos pelo cineasta em sua estada em Paris e na pesquisa sobre o cineasta francês Jean Vigo. Veremos como revisitar a fortuna artística de Eisenstein será fundamental para compreender aspectos da linguagem cinematográfica clássica, fundamentada significativamente na montagem paralela e no close-up. No caso de Welles, o foco repousa nas descobertas da profundidade de campo e do plano sequência como recursos narrativos carácterísticos do cinema moderno. Em conjunto, o comentário às obras de Eisenstein e Welles abrem caminho para reflexões histórico-biográficas bastante refinadas, que ainda hoje podem inspirar aqueles que tem o cinema como tema de suas pesquisas históricas, embasadas em uma metodologia apta a pautar questões de linguagem, estilo e expressão social que afluem do fenômeno cinematográfico.

A Study on the Aesthetic Style of Hong Kong Film in the New Wave Movement

This paper mainly studies the new wave movement of film in Hong Kong from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Through the analysis of its background, the transformation of aesthetic style and the inspiration and significance of the new wave film to the later Hong Kong film, we can feel the unique charm and style of the new wave film.

Nella terra di mezzo: cinema e immigrazione in Italia 1990–2010 by Giancarla Vanoli

MLR, .,   homage to Franca Rame in her own staging of Mary at the Cross at the end of her play Passione. Dario Fo’s role at the origin of teatro di narrazione has been widely discussed, beginning with Simone Soriani’s  article ‘Dario Fo, il teatro di narrazione, la nuova performance epica: per una genealogia di un “quasi-genere”’, Forum Italicum ,  (), –, as well as in his  book Sulla scena del racconto (Genoa: Zona). Nor is the function of Fo’s relationship with the audience new, having been investigated by Scuderi himself in several articles and books. Rather, the original contribution of this collection is that it both looks back at the roots of Fo’s theatrical activity and looks forward by discussing his legacy as a consummate playwright and performer. Will the theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame—its political engagement and popular roots—maintain its relevance even aer their death? e essays contained in this volume indicate that it will. U  A D C Nella terra di mezzo: cinema e immigrazione in Italia –. By G V. (Linee) Milan: Meltemi. .  pp. €. ISBN ––– –. In her insightful study, Giancarla Vanoli sets out to investigate the fertile intersection between Italian cinema and the theme of immigration from  to , years in which the style and format of immigration films were first shaped. While this study follows the lines of previous Italian essays such as Sonia Cincinelli’s Senza frontiere (Rome: Kappa, ) and Angela Bianca Saponari’s Il corpo esiliato (Bari: Progedit, ), Vanoli’s work is original in demonstrating how Italian immigration cinema has worked as a ‘grande specchio dell’identità nazionale’ (p. ), while reviving the debate on authorship and genre in the Italian context. e volume includes a short Introduction, three chapters, closing remarks, and a useful appendix referencing major Italian films about immigration, about half of which are directly analysed by the author throughout the book. Chapter  provides a detailed analysis of the state of Italian cinema in the early s, investigating its turbulent evolution across the big and the small screen, in the rising years of Berlusconi’s Mediaset and at times of scarce public funding for the film industry. Vanoli highlights that, while television has played an important role in spreading xenophobic and populist attitudes towards immigrants, numerous film-makers have used the medium of cinema to convey solidarity with them. However, an appearance of support which in reality belittles the migrant characters is already identified in films such as Pirani’s L’appartamento (). In fact, the author clearly underlines how films about immigration, which was then—and remains today—one of the most divisive issues in Italian society, struggle to offer nuanced portraits of migrant subjects, and oen fall into the trap of buonismo. In the second chapter Vanoli examines the entanglements between immigration films and two strongholds of Italian cinema: author and genre. Analysing the works of De Seta, Bertolucci, and Olmi—the venerati maestri—she concludes that their  Reviews authoritative position in the Italian landscape does not exclude them from a paternalistic approach to narrating the story of the migrant, a clear example of which is identified by the author in the ending of De Seta’s Lettere dal Sahara (). Similar risks are highlighted in the production of the in-between generation of film-makers, particularly in the indulgent Western gaze cast in two major dramas, Amelio’s Lamerica () and Giordana’s Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti (). Such risks seem to be avoided with the third generation of registi, such as Garrone and Manetti Bros., who are seen as postmodern, globalized authors able to offer a less hierarchical vision of the interaction between Italians and immigrants, as in the metanarrative of Terra di mezzo () or in the moves towards accented cinema in Torino Boys (). e third chapter concludes the analysis on genre in immigration cinema from the early s, arguing that the theme of migration brings new life both into the tradition of documentary—a notable example being Come un uomo sulla terra by Biadene, Segre, and Yimer ()—and in the resurgence of comedy with works such as Comencini’s Bianco e nero (). At the same time, the author...

Filmowa franczyza. Od tematu do widowiska telewizyjnego (na podstawie cyklu „Prawdziwe Historie”)

The TV series True Stories (Prawdziwe Historie) is an example of contemporary commercial cinema. It is located on the border of documentary film and an attractive version of fictional cinema. In specific circumstances, it can be treated as a commercial product, but not only in the sense of film production and distribution, but more broadly, as a recognisable brand on the domestic cinema market, containing all the elements of industry know-how, as well as significant and commonly seen features of a film style that guarantees both turnout and financial success. In a sense, therefore, this phenomenon can be considered in terms of a film franchise which offers creators, most often beginners, a proven business patent in the form of a coherent television series, but also giving the possibility of a safe feature debut and the space for creative exploration.

Dark and gritty/slick and glossy: Genre, Nollywood and Lagos

Abstract In this article, I am concerned principally with Taxi Driver (Oriahi, 2015), Gbomo Gbomo Express (Taylaur, 2015), Just Not Married (Patrick, 2016), Ojukokoro (Greed) (Olaitan, 2016) as well as Catch.er (Taylaur, 2017). These films are characterized as much by the depiction of clever criminals as the cultivation of a cynical disposition from which transgressions of this sort appear stylish and violence is rendered 'cool'. Almost all of them turn on a scheme to dupe others of a large sum of money, and are punctuated by backstabbing partners in crime, tables turning by chance, edgy armed standoffs and a surprising number of bodies in car trunks. Given the dark portrait of Lagos these films present, one might be inclined to read the genre cycle as a reiteration of the role Lagos has historically played as embodiment of popular anxieties concerning insecurity, material inequality and social breakdown. And yet, in recent years, conditions within the city have markedly improved over those of the deepest point of urban crisis in the 1990s when Lagos was, indeed, paralysed by a generalized condition of insecurity and dysfunction. New Nollywood's repertoire of film styles has expanded to include international film cycles and genres such as romantic comedies, psychological thrillers, police procedurals, among others. This raises important questions about the nature of correspondences between cinema and the city, such as whether New Nollywood genre films tell us anything about social, cultural or historical circumstances in Lagos, or the place the city occupies in the popular imagination, for instance. Recent upmarket film noirs speak, instead, to the evolution of Lagos as a media capital. I examine the different kinds of work genre performs in New and Old Nollywood films and propose a number of ways to critically interpret genre's various registers.

Real-time non-photorealistic animation for immersive storytelling in “Age of Sail”

Immersive media such as virtual and augmented reality pose some interesting new challenges for non-photorealistic animation: we must not only balance the screen-space rules of a 2D visual style against 3D motion coherence, but also account for stereo spatialization and interactive camera movement, at a rate of 90 frames per second. We introduce two new real-time rendering techniques: MetaTexture, an example-based texturing method that adheres to the movement of 3D geometry while preserving the texture’s screen-space characteristics, and Edge Breakup, a method for roughening edges by warping with structured noise. We also describe a custom rendering pipeline featuring art-directable coloring, shadow filtering, and texture indication, and our approach to animating and rendering a painterly ocean in real time. We show how we have used these techniques to achieve the “moving illustration” style of the real-time immersive short film “Age of Sail”.

“Tugev Balti natsionalistlik keskus” ning Nõukogude välispropaganda teel sõjast rahuaega ja külma sõtta [Abstract: “The strong Baltic nationalistic centre” and Soviet foreign propaganda: from war to peace and toward the Cold War

“Tugev Balti natsionalistlik keskus” ning Nõukogude välispropaganda teel sõjast rahuaega ja külma sõtta [Abstract: “The strong Baltic nationalistic centre” and Soviet foreign propaganda: from war to peace and toward the Cold War

Trans-National Adaptations of the Church Mouse, a Cross-Class Office Romance of the Early 1930s

AbstractA Hungarian play, A Templom Egere (The Church Mouse), first performed in 1927, was adapted across nations on stage and for three film versions: the German Arm wie eine kirchenmaus (Poor as a Church Mouse, 1931), an American, Beauty and the Boss (1932), and a British, The Church Mouse (1934). All versions fuse a Cinderella theme with the prevalent discourse of the period on stenographers and secretaries as sexual attractions or as machines, identified with the typewriter, but the versions differ with respect to the heroine’s transformation from machine to alluring female and in their film styles, particularly in the extent and ways they ‘open-up’ the play.

STYLOMETRY: STATISTICAL APPROACH INTO FILM STYLE

So far the study of cinema is still dominated by the use of a Narrative Analysis approach, where its weaknesses do not have empirical evidences, so the resulting analysis is assumptions which then followed by a text debate. Statistical Style Analysis or Stylometry is an alternative method in the study of cinema used to measure the director's formal (film style) parameters. This study applied Stylometry to the films by Chaerul Umam for decades (1970-2000). From this study it was found statistically that the Chaerul Umam style film underwent a change in the use of zoom techniques, the dominance of the use of medium shot (MS) and classified as small ASL units under 9 seconds / shot which is 6.6 / seconds.

Terror films: The socio-cultural reconstruction of trauma in contemporary Israeli cinema

Ben-Moshe Yael, Ebbrecht-Hartmann Tobias, Terror films: The socio-cultural reconstruction of trauma in contemporary Israeli cinema. “Images” vol. XXV, no. 34. Poznań 2019. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 69–86. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2019.34.05.
 The public discourse in Israel regarding events such as the Holocaust, war, or terror attacks mostly failed to embrace the trauma caused by such events, and to integrate their effects in the collective memory. According to trauma theoreticians, the location of trauma in the discourse is related to the character of trauma as a non-narratable memory, since personal trauma exist in the void, thus marking a missing memory. This paper explores the notion of trauma in contemporary Israeli cinema as it was reconstructed during and after the Second Intifada (2000–2008). The paper focuses on feature films reflecting on experiences of terrorist violence, among them Avanim (2004), Distortion (2004), Frozen Days (2006), The Bubble (2006), 7 Minutes in Heaven (2009). These films embrace parallel elements structuring a worldview, in the private as well as the collective sphere, thus shaping the surroundings as a mirror of the self and the subjective traumatic experience as a reflection of a complex social reality.A particular focus of our analysis will also be on aesthetic strategies that cinematically express rupture and distortion of terrorist violence and trauma, especially moments of suddenness and disruption in contrast to duration and circular repetition, elements of a specific temporality of trauma that also shaped the narration and style of recent Israeli war films, such as Waltz with Bashir (2008) or Beaufort (2007).

The Psychosocial Image

The history of film style is structured by a division between two types of images, each with a unique relationship to the reality that they have commonly been understood to represent. Andre Bazin’s...

Costume, nostalgia and sexuality in murder mysteries by Maria Lang and their adaptations

Crime novels by the prolific Swedish writer Maria Lang have been adapted into films during two periods: 1960–61 and 2013. This article situates the resulting films as media products of their time and examines the functions of costume and film style in the two adaptation periods. The article identifies nostalgia in Arne Mattsson’s 1960–61 films in how they contribute towards an old-fashioned film style. The string of films from 2013 engages in nostalgia-as-tourism and positions itself as ‘cosy crime’ by activating viewers partly as consumers and inviting them to a viewing mode of vintage window-shopping. The article locates nostalgic pastness in the assembling or dissembling of layered outfits, exploring this practice in conjunction with murder, vulnerability and culpability. Finally, the article traces attitudes towards sexuality and sexualization, addressing notions of respectability, the sexual liberation of contemporaneous Sweden (the ‘Swedish sin’) and points of contact between good taste, dress style and sexuality.

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film props in the triptych “Three Colours”

Krzysztof Kieślowski employed film properties in a creative way in his Three Colours (Trois couleurs, 1993–94) trilogy. They play various roles in Blue (Bleu, 1993), White (Blanc, 1993) and Red (Rogue, 1994): they make the presented world more probable, co-create images of heroes, build dramaturgy and convey symbolic content. Such a treatment of film props is shaped by the director’s film style and creates a specific cinematic atmosphere.

African Documentary Film: Jean Marie Teno and Hybridism in Afrique, je te Plumerai

Documentary film has been known for its capacity to interrogate issues of social, economic, cultural and political significance, but this interrogation has been at headlocks with African governments who use the documentary genre as showcasing and praising tool. This article examines the utilization of documentary films in Africa by African governments such as Tanzania, and by independent African filmmakers such as Jean Marie Teno. Jean Marie Teno’s film “Afrique, je te Plumerai” is examined and its role in the struggle for social, political, economic, and cultural emancipation of the Cameroonian, thus African people is revealed. Through the use of distinct mixed modes of cinematic address, Teno has created a hybrid documentary genre that invites and calls for a diversified filmic style that allows for self-expression, new images, and voices. Teno has created an African documentary film that juxtaposes two distinctive traditions; African oral narrative tradition and Western filmic technique to shake the African people to action. By artfully combining contemporary images with archival film footage, discontinuity narrative structure and fictionalized images the film challenges perspectives and offers viewers a far greater understanding of both history and present condition of misuse of political powers. Teno has pushed the envelope of documentary genre further and African documentary furthest.

Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, 1933–1938 by Robert Dassanowsky

Reviewed by: Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, 1933–1938 by Robert Dassanowsky Joseph W. Moser Robert Dassanowsky, Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, 1933–1938. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2018. 423 pp. With Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, eminent Austrian film scholar Robert Dassanowsky has shed light on a yet unexplored but very complex and important topic in German-language film of the 1930s. Well known for his important monograph Austrian Cinema: A History (McFarland, 2005), which provided the first comprehensive English-language overview of Austrian film, Dassanowsky focuses in Screening Transcendence on Austrian film in the five years before the Nazi takeover of Austria, during which time Germany was already under Nazi control and Austria was an authoritarian fascist state, though very different in regard to film production given the Austrofascist regime’s acceptance of Jewish actors and filmmakers as well as the lack of an effective centralized government authority shaping Austrian film. Austria provided German-language film with a brief period of freedom, which however was limited by economic considerations, as films that could not be released in the German market were unlikely to make a lot of money. The Austrian film industry in this period was [End Page 168] thus split into films that were intended for release in Nazi Germany, primarily out of economic considerations, and which thus fulfilled the racist exclusion and political conformity as required by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, essentially preempting the so-called Anschluss in Austrian film. More interesting is the other group of Austrian films that did not meet Nazi criteria for release in Germany and had to rely on box office returns in Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other free European countries. It is this latter category of films that provided German exiles and German-speaking Jews an opportunity to continue making films—for some this was a temporary stop on the way into exile in Hollywood. This well-researched book, which includes an extensive bibliography and index as well as a helpful, detailed chronological filmography, is accessible to both experts and novices. Dassanowsky provides his readers with an expert introduction on the political context of Austrofascism that may be very useful for scholars uninitiated to the topic, while immediately drawing his readers into Austrian film production and examples of the films, some of which is likely to be new material for seasoned Austrianists as well. The book is laid out in three main parts with subchapters. “Part 1: Structures” provides the contextual political background as well as the context of Austrian film production of the time. “Part 2: Genres, Narratives, Contexts,” which makes up three-quarters of the book, provides detailed examples of various film genres and actual films over the course of eight chapters. The topics included in this part deal with Viennese Film as conceived and developed by Willi Forst and Walter Reisch; the Emigrantenfilm and “the Construction of a Catholic-Political Identity”; “Female Types and Sexuality in Feature Films”; “Tales of Patriarchy”; cine-operettas and music film; “New Order Out of Chaos: The Austrian Screwball and Hybrid Comedy”; experimentalism and the question of a national film style; and “the Alps versus Vienna in Film.” The wide variety of topics covered in this part of the book are indicative of the large scope of films made in Austria in this time. The book closes with “Part 3: Locations,” the subtitle of which, “From Rome to Hollywood,” indicates some of the directions that Austrian filmmakers (along with Berlin) were looking at in these five years. In this short period, Austrian film laid a pathway for many actors to work in American film, such as “Walter Reisch, Franziska Gaal, Hans Jaray, S. Z. Szakall, Felix Bressart, Oskar Karlweis, Felix Jackson, Henry Koster, Joe Pasternak, Hans J. Salter, Richard Oswald, Hans May, Nicholas Brodszky, [End Page 169] Albert Bassermann, Steve Szekely, Robert Wilmot” (ix), and thus this book is also an important contribution to better understanding Austrian-American history in film. At the same time, in this period the careers of Austrian actors and filmmakers who would stay under Nazi occupation continued to develop as well. Willi Forst developed a Viennese aesthetic...